TIME TO ATTACH THE LED'S...
Here are some of my suggestions.
1) Make sure that the aluminum surface (heat sink) is very clean. I cleaned mine with alcohol and cotton balls.
2) When you mix Part A and B, make it on small batches. Maybe a 1/4" diameter of part A and 1/4" diameter of Part B. You only have 5 minutes to work on the mix before it starts to harden.
3) On that 1/4" diameter A & B, mix it in a circular motion by the included spatula.
4) On that same mix, maybe you can divide it to 4-6 LEDs. You only need small amount, enough that when you press the LED on the heatsink, you will see some oozing out on the sides.
5) Push and then twist. I did a push then twist it slowly 360 degrees while pushing. this will evenly spread the adhesive and squeeze the extra on the sides.
Remember... it's suppose to fill up just the imperfections of both sides the LED and the heatsink.
6) It is very important that you arrange it in such a way that all polarities are oriented the same way. So that when you start soldering, you just connect left then right, left then right, etc. or + then -, + then -, etc.
STRIPPING AND SOLDERING...
With the spacing that I have, the wires that come with the package is of no use to me. They are too short. I ended up buying some ga#18 wires from Frys Electronics.
Problem... I only have an old 25 watt soldering gun and since the LEDs are already attached to the heatsink, it was really hard, because the heat is being absorbed by the aluminum bar.
Solution... Buy a more powerful soldering gun, or connect all the wires to the LED before you attach it to the aluminum bar. I dont know how youre going to twist and push those with wires already connected. Note: I bought a more powerful soldering iron. Its 25 watt but with a 90 watt push button feature. Its like butter even if its already attached to the aluminum bar.
What I ended up doing is to wait at least 30 seconds before i solder each wire contact to LED... What happens is that the second you connect your soldering gun with the STAR, it absorbs all the heat on the gun, thus making it useless. So I have to wait for the temp to go up again.
Here is the finish product.
Since we need a little bit of flexibility when we are solder these wires, I ended up cutting it a bit longer than what i really need and make an "S" curve like in the picture. This way it will act like a spring so that you can pull or push it while soldering.
Another note... The optics does not lock to the LED's by itself. So you need to manually attach it by means of adhesive or glue. Do not use... superglue because there are anecdotal evidence that it fogs up the LED inside the optics. They suggest that you use the same two part thermal paste that came with the package. Use a toothpick as applicator, so you only use very very tiny. So in the future you can easily remove them without problems.
WIRING AND CONNECTING...
I need to think of something to use so i can easily plug and unplug these lights, I have thought of those audio plugs, or headphone plugs, etc. But they are expensive compared to what I ended up using. I bought these 14' telephone extension cables for $2 something. And the end looks like these. Note: Well, I hate these wires... they don not solder well. Just use the black audio wires for headphones extensions.
I was worried about the gauge of these wires, so what i did was use two wires for each. What Im saying is since you have 2 pairs or 4 wires inside the phone chord, I used two of them for (+) positive, and the remaining two for (-) negative. Since they have gauge 24 (I think) for each wire, doubling it should give me at least equivalent or more to gauge 18 of copper wire, which is capable of handling 10 amps based on this chart
http://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/Wire-Gauge_Ampacity
To be honest, I really dont know how to read this chart. Is this per 100'? or 1000'? Anyone?
Here is a pic of the connection already mounted on my light hood. Notice the black tape I used? Well that tells me which one is Royal Blue. This is very critical, since we can easily plug the wire for cool whites on the blues. You ask why not? they use the same drivers right? Well they do use the same drivers but they dont have the same amp usage. Remember that the RB's will have a 0.75 amp, And CW's have 1 amp... if we accidentally plug the cable for cool whites (which has 1 amp settings), then it should be ok correct? actually yes, but just dont want to risk it. What if for some reason you have more than 1 amp on that plug, then there goes your RB's. This is just a precaution.
10 VOLT POWER SUPPLY...
Since it is very tricky if not hard to find a 10 volt power supply, I ended up using a regulated variable voltage power supply. Those types that have 3, 6, 9, 12 volts selection. We need regulated so that we can make sure that no matter how many drivers we connect to it (as load), it will stay on the correct voltage that we want it to be. I adjusted mine to 9 volts, and put tape over it so i dont accidentally adjust it in the future, which might be catastrophic if we accidentally adjusted it to 12 volts. Note: Look what I found, just get this and save yourself some trouble.
Once were done with the 9 volt signal, then its time to connect everything and adjust the drivers. Remember early on that we opened our drivers and turned it down (counter clockwise) so we dont accidentally use these drivers with more amps than we need to. 750 milliamp or 0.75 amps for XR-E, and 1000 milliamp or 1 amp for XP-G. These are just recommendations. If you look at the spec sheet of these LEDs, XR-E can go max of 1 amp. and XP-G can go max of 1.5 amps.
Now this video will explain to you how to adjust your mean well drivers using 9 volt power supply.
From Reef Led Lights website.
There are many ways how to check your milliamp reading thru your tester, one example is from the video above. Another one (the one i used) is by means of a resistor (Thanks to Kcress). I used a 1 ohm resistor connected inline with my LED circuit. Why? On the video above, you need to break the circuit to put your tester inline to know the amps. That is fine, but with the resistor technique, I dont have to break anything. Just put your tester in volts, and then connect it to both ends of the resistor, and tadaa!!! there is your milliamp reading. You can always do this and check your reading anytime you want.
So why not just break it and put your tester inline, like what they did on the video???? Well, there is a danger to that, specially like me, I keep forgetting stuff.... Remember... that when you are breaking off the circuit, you need to turn off the driver first, then put your tester inline, then turn it on. The same thing when removing the tester. If you dont and you forgot to do this, then say bye bye to your LED's.
Here is a pic of my temporary setup showing the resistor (1 ohm 2 watt @ frys $1 for two resistor) connected inline with the circuit.
Here is the diagram.
Here is the plastic shoe box (less than $2 @ Target) that I used to make it a little bit nicer to look at. It houses two meanwell drivers and the variable voltage adapter (less then $2 @ RE-PC) that i used. Note: It now houses three meanwell drivers.
Note... We need a 10 volt power supply to provide signal to our mean well drivers. And if you recall, I am using two Mean Well ELN-60-48D dimmable driver. One for each strip of LED. And the 48D needs analog signal of 10 volts. The 10 volts does not need to be powerful, just milliamp's of signal to tell the driver that it will needs to go or off or anything in between. So it means you can use one (1) 10 volts power supply to many mean well drivers.
Here is the picture of how I arranged my resistor permanently... it also shows how i connect my meter to test it.
Tadaaa!!!!!!
The picture above shows 60 degree optics on the royal blue, and 45 degree (tighter) on the cool whites.
I cannot wait to test it on my tank so I installed the lights using zip ties mounted on my existing T5 bulb, turned off of course.
Just the blue alone, is already a win win situation for me. It is really a very good actinic supplement, even it they are not the same spectrum as vho's, the blue color is so deep and rich that it fluoresce everything.
I highly recommend it.
COMPARING INTENSITIES
Ok, I dont have access to par meter or something similar, so the best method of comparison i can think of is to do a side by side camera shot/s. At least by our naked eye (un-scientific) we can actually see or tell the difference.
THE SETUP
All shots were taken on these settings.
Nikon D50 camera on full manual setting. ISO 800, Speed is 40, Aperture is f8, white balance is flash.
Intentionally made my T5 shot darker (as a base line test). No photoshop adjustments, just image cropping.
12" above water line....
First shot is 4x39 watt T5 (1 Fiji purple, 3 blue+) + 2x54 watt T5 (2 blue+). Total of 6 bulbs.
Second Shot is all LED running on 50% power.
Third shot is all LED. 50% white. 100% Blue.
Fourth shot is LED. all running on 100%.
T5 VS LED...
Lets do a comparison of the T5 and LED....
T5 (264 watts)
LED (72 watts)
Just a note:
The pics may look dark or dimmed to you, but this is not true. I just made my settings in such a way that we dont have over exposure on the images. It is very deceiving, I know, but on camera, you can make your pics really bright or really dark....
The most important thing here is that all shots are taken on one setting as listed above.
Another note, that these are only 24 bulb LEDs only. Based on my calculations, I should have 36 minimum on a 75 gallon. But to be honest, The 24 bulb setup is way more than enough to lit my softy tank... Im running on 50% only right now, so i dont shock my tank creatures. Its too bright....
SHIMMER...
And the shimmer.... Oh my! Oh my! I really missed this shimmer from my previous MH setup. Whats really amazing is the blue have shimmer too... can you do that on actinics? hahaha... Just this alone, made me so very very happy.
This is the shimmer im talking about...
@0:50 - turned down the whites to 50%
@1:20 - turned off the whites
compared to my previous T5 setup...
For comments and questions, Email Me